LONDON — A new report has concluded that some 1,400 children were sexually exploited in one northern England town— a damming account of the collective failure by authorities to prevent children as young as 11 from being beaten, raped and trafficked.
Report author Alexis Jay, a former chief social work adviser to the Scottish government, cited examples Tuesday of "children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally-violent rapes and threatened they would be next."
She says the problem was not prioritized by South Yorkshire Police but managers in child protection services also failed to act. The report covers the period between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham, a town of some 250,000.
The majority of the perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage.
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